The Beatitudes

"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked" is how the whole Psalter opens (Psalms 1:1, ASV). The Hebrew word behind it is ashre, "oh the happiness of…", and it heads psalm after psalm: "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven" (32:1), "Blessed is he that considereth the poor" (41:1), "Blessed are they that are perfect in the way" (119:1). When the Greek Old Testament rendered ashre, it chose makarios, and makarios is the word Matthew 5 opens with, eight times running. The beatitude is an Old Testament wisdom form; Psalm 1 is the Psalter's gateway, and Matthew 5 is its New Testament echo.

What Jesus does with the form is the surprise. The Psalter blesses the man who shuns the counsel of the wicked; Jesus blesses the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, the persecuted, people no one in the first century, or ours, would call blessed on sight. Each blessing carries a promise, and where the root is genuinely verbal, not just thematic, this page names it: the meek inheriting "the earth" is Psalm 37:11 almost word for word, though the ASV renders that psalm's own wording "the land"

("the meek shall inherit the land, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace"), the same Hebrew territory-word Matthew's Greek broadens to the whole earth. Comfort for mourners answers Isaiah 61's Jubilee announcement, the very passage Jesus reads of himself at Nazareth (Luke 4:17–21, ASV: "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me… he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor").

"For theirs is the kingdom of heaven" closes both the first beatitude and the eighth (5:3, 5:10) — an inclusio bracketing the set as one closed unit, not decoration. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown pressed the first occurrence hard: "The poor in spirit not only shall have — they already have — the kingdom." — Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Matthew 5:3. That "already" is not incidental; see the drilldown below for what it costs and what it doesn't.